Oral History of the Zombie War: Supplemental Stories, Continued
by BetaBass
Summary: Time passes. It seems the past, like the dead, won't die. A continuation of World War Z: Supplemental Stories, in time for Halloween.
1. Chapter 1 - Alvarez

Author's Note:

Hello, I just wanted to thank everyone for the feedback on Oral History of the Zombie War: Supplemental Stories. I realize it has been years since I dropped this story. Life happened, and I spent a couple of years having quite forgotten about this story. I only recently unearthed my flash drive with my old stories and brain litter on it. I figured I'd come back and post the couple of follow-up chapters I had written, but found that I couldn't remember my password to the BetaBrass account and couldn't even recover the email account I had used. I've had to create a new account with the username BetaBass (I just dropped the 'r'.) I apologize for the inconvenience.

As for the comments on the story – wow. It's like seeing a collage of society's viewpoints. When I first read WWZ, I was inspired by Brooks's ability to connect readers with vastly different characters, some who I admired and others from whom I recoiled. I am now surprised to find that readers to my fan fiction seem to have also experienced visceral reactions to my characters. The BetaBrass account was my first, and so far only, foray into creative writing, so the impassioned responses blew me away. Thank you.

For those who like it, I'm super glad and I cannot tell you how cool it feels to have given people some measure of entertainment. For those who feel threatened, just know that I have done my best to represent bits and pieces of viewpoints, opinions and experiences that exist in the world.

Reading back through these chapters, I remember that I was building up a subplot that I had stuck in there. Functionally, I wanted some kind of continuity to tie the different interviews together, but I had never gotten around to planning the details of the endgame. Since I only have another character to unearth, though, I figure I'll just let their stories speak for themselves.

* * *

**Liberty Island, Ohio**

**[Formerly Kelleys Island, Liberty Island is a masterpiece. The original shorelines have been left as they are. Tall fencing runs the entire perimeter of the island, set in from the water. A series of steel walls back up the fence. The island's true security is in the water. A wall of netting ensured that any amphibious Zack were brought to the surface, where those on watch could alert the launch for cleanup. Robert Alvarez, though older now, is an intimidating figure. Wild hair frames sharply focused eyes that observe from behind an impressive beard. He gets right to the point.]**

What do you want?

**Thank you for seeing me. I was passing through and heard someone here, you, could tell me about The Guild [1]. That you might tell me about it.**

No. That all?

**Well, I -**

Look. I don't know who gave you my name. If it was that ass-wipe Whitaker, I've got nothing to say. **[I try to be stealthy as I flip my notebook's page, obscuring Richard Whitaker's [2] name.]**

**Is there a reason you're hesitant to talk about anyone from The Guild?**

Me? Why'd you think that? Some government weasel waltzing in here and asking questions about a bunch of boot-licking bitches ... and you wonder why someone on a declared independent island isn't laying the table?

**Boot-licking? Whose boots did they lick?**

You need to ask? Jesus. Either you've practiced the dumb routine or it's more'n'a routine. You ever wonder what kind of shit they did on behalf of the government? Doesn't matter if you did, it's all sealed by government order. But it was messed up, and these drivers and pencil pushers and college kids went along with it for some flu shots.

**Do you know what it was?**

Even if I did - an'I'm not saying I do - even if I did, s'not like I could tell you without kicking up another rebellion with a smack down we're not ready for. **[Looks around, paranoid. Leans in.]**

I'll tell you this. They're a mob. Yeah, they had a front that took people in and fed 'em an' the whole nine yards. They hid behind a bunch of good samaritans, college kids, amateur radio operators [3] and fire fighters [4] to cement the Redecker Plan. The do-gooders, the fire fighters … the lot of them really meant it. But the ones directing the show **[shakes head]** even their "good deeds" stank once you realized why they did them. They had their fingers in more pies than you'd care to know. More than I know, probably. Talk about skeletons in the closet. You go poking around, you're sure to find more'n'a few hanging around.

… **Well … Can you tell me about your time there? How did you become a driver for The Guild?**

Not much, if you catch my drift. I didn't become a driver for The Guild until after I'd left the Consortium in Massachusetts. The campus had become more established by then, and there were plans of trying to expand safe zones. **[Snorts.]** More like safe pockets. Really, just so travelers had Z-free pit stops as they traveled around. I was itching to do something other than shovel snow and ice and muck the stables.

**Did you find the Consortium early on?**

Well, early-ish, I guess. I'm originally from Fresno, California. My wife and I raised our kids there, but California was so expensive to live there. Once our kids were grown and established, we decided to move somewhere where we could afford to live. I was a truck driver, and it used to earn okay, but not so much anymore. I did the math, and I thought we could make it in Texas, where the cost of living was just a little bit cheaper. We moved to Amarillo, Texas, and everything went to shit.

**The dead?**

No. See, I'd bought my own rig, we bought our own house in Texas. We had these up front expenditures, but we thought it'd be alright. I thought if I bought my own truck, I'd be able to actually earn enough to make a living before I retired, since the profits wouldn't be taken by the corporate overheads. But then Karen died, and I was alone, sleeping in a house I only got to live in for a couple of days a week, when I wasn't driving long-distance hauls.

**[We sit at an outdoor picnic table in a beer garden. Alvarez waves at the waitress who disappears for some menus.]** And the money I earned had to go to the mortgage of that damn house that I suddenly hated, and what was left over had to go towards repairs to the rig, and it always needed repairs. Anything left over from that had to pay to insure the rig. And since I was self-employed, I needed to buy my own health insurance, but since I couldn't afford it, I just didn't have it. I couldn't sell the damn truck, which meant I couldn't afford to move back to California, where I'd left everyone I knew.

One morning, I was pulling on my boots and a shooting pain erupted up from my leg through my back and my neck. Weeks went by, and I still couldn't really put on my pants without lying down in bed doing it upside down. I couldn't afford to go to a doctor, and I couldn't afford to take a day off, so I continued to stuff myself into my seat and sit still for ten and twelve and sixteen hour days. I was pre-diabetic at that point, and was terrified because even if I could go to a doctor, I was afraid he'd tell me I should start taking the insulin I couldn't afford. Zack was about the best thing to ever happen to me.

**Pardon?**

Yeah – I mean, not the mass death and suffering of billions, but after. You know that guy in the movie who starts out as a nobody and then something crazy happens and he lands the plane or he takes out the monster and ends up being the hero? I'm not saying I'm a hero by any means, but I'm saying I came into the end of the world as a nobody – worse than – and I ended up landing on my feet. **[Shakes his head.]** I just never thought that'd be me, especially at that age. **[He pulls out his wallet and takes out a picture. In it, he is much younger, clean shaven, and fairly overweight, surrounded by his wife, daughter and two sons.]**

I mean, I'm this out-of-shape, pre-diabetic, widower who's miles in debt with no survival skills. I was really friggin' depressed at that point. I was in pain every waking moment from a pinched nerve, I was living paycheck to paycheck, I was alone. At every pit stop, the cashier or the waitress or the guy ahead of me in line were all dead in the eyes. Every time I was on a delivery, I'd scan the horizon and look for the best place to drive off the road and crash into a mountainside, or off a bridge or cliff. I was contemplating writing out the suicide notes to my kids and everything. So, I didn't even have much will to live at that point. **[The waitress brings a handle of beer and Alvarez pours generous glasses of the frothy brew for both of us. He takes a drink.]**

I guess the only leg up I had over most other people was the fact that I traveled all over the country. I saw a lot of it building up. There was this one thing. Traffic suddenly gummed up because of a car crash in the southbound lanes. It was strange, because the car had gone off the road into a ditch in a field on the other side of the highway, so the northbound lanes should have been left open. But they had decided to close the northbound lanes, too, so I was just sitting and watching. It was a car crash after the morning rush hour with relatively clear traffic, and it didn't look like a case of drunk driving. And they had a bunch of cops standing around, pretty far from the car, not approaching it.

It wasn't until a bit later that I realized that those organ donations, blood transfusions, mild bites, and all that had festered enough that their loved ones were driving them to the hospital when they'd turned. Anyway, these cops were all wrapped up in protective gear and the EMTs hadn't even gotten out of the ambulance, waiting for the okay. This bloody woman has an open door right next to her that's flown open, but she's crawling over the dash and pressing at the hole in her broken windshield to get to the cops in front of the car. She's moaning and some of the commuters are shouting at the cops from their car windows to do their jobs and go help the lady and all that.

But the windshield had that hole in it, from when her head had initially hit it, I guess, and she's pressing at this hole when the skin of her face gives way. Her forehead, left eye, nose and upper lip are fine, I guess, but everywhere else on her face got scraped off by the glass as her head pops through. That shut everyone up. So this lady's knee is leaning on the horn to climb out at this point, so we can't really hear much moaning anymore, but then the windshield frame kind of gives and pops out. She comes sliding over the hood of the car wearing the windshield around her neck. The remaining skin on her face, since her scalp and surrounding face is gone, kind of slips off. Her right shoulder had a few chunks taken out of her, so that doesn't help. So she looks like she's ready to audition for some horror movie and she's lugging the windshield along, reaching for the cops. I guess her husband or whoever'd bitten her was in the back seat and he crawls out of the open windshield, intent on sampling the cops. Once he showed up, they decided it was time to open fire.

**So that's what warned you this was no ordinary epidemic?**

It's crazy to think about now, but no. I was freaked out by what I'd seen, sure. But I was still wrapped up in my own world of depression and that car crash was just a crazy scene. It was kind of like seeing a tornado or something. It's big, it's scary and you know it's a big deal, but it wasn't my job to take care of it. What finally got me freaked out was after.

After the car crash, I bought a gun and I kept it, along with a crow bar, on the seat next to me. There were so many reports of rabid muggings gone wrong and stuff. I'd spent a couple years living in Florida when my dad was in the military, and it was like Florida's crazy had flooded all over everywhere else. Since I was always in strange places at odd hours, you never knew who you'd run into. Pit stops were becoming creepy rather than the normal soul-crushing deal.

Anyway, so I'd bought this gun, and gotten a crow bar, and I kept it on the seat next to me. I'm not sure why this particular cop didn't have anything better to be doing since society was unraveling, but I guess my broken tail light still merited the stop. One of the things we don't really mention these days is how much more jittery cops were getting with the Z Plague. Not only were they working with people on the worst days of their lives, they knew anyone could be carrying a gun and any day could be their last. They already had a stereotype of shooting unarmed people. So this officer has me step down from my truck and he takes a look in the cabin. I was somewhat nervous, because I was worried I'd look like a criminal or something. He steps down and asks me how much ammunition I had.

I hadn't actually bought any ammunition, because I hadn't handled a gun since I was a kid when my dad took me shooting the one time. He taught me to shoot a rifle one afternoon when I was a teenager, but we never did it again because I wanted to join the marching band and stuff instead. **[Alvarez stares at me.]** Don't laugh. Anyway, it wasn't my thing, and my dad didn't love guns all that much. He was just trying to find something to do with me. So, he taught me some basic woodworking skills. He was kind of bad at it, but it was time spent together and in the end I knew my way around some basic tools. We made a stool and a box and a crooked bookshelf and stuff. Where was I?

**The officer was asking about your ammunition.**

Yeah. So I told him I hadn't bought any bullets because I wasn't a very good shot. And he tells me – you wanna know what he says? He says:

"Well, you might want to get a few boxes of them." And I say,

"Huh?" And he looks at me all serious and says,

"If you're really that bad, just stick with the crow bar, or get an axe or something. But if you're in a pinch the bullets might do you good. I wouldn't bother with waving an empty gun for intimidation." There I am, kind of confused that he didn't bother asking if the gun was registered, even if this is Texas, and he's trying to encourage me to get ammo. And then he says,

"Just make sure to get that tail light fixed." And he's on his way.

That's what finally shook me out of my funk. I'd been so wrapped up in all of my troubles, I hadn't bothered listening to what was going on around me. After that cop pulled me over, I finished my delivery, went to the bank and took out a loan.

**A loan?**

Yeah. I figured I was already indebted to my eyeballs, what was another several thousand? I sold my house, got out of my mortgage and moved into my truck. Worked a bit longer to save some more money. I had enough money to see a doctor and he gave me some anti-inflammatories and some exercises to strengthen different muscles to stabilize my back. I bought that ammo and stocked up on some extra cans of gas in my truck. The government had acknowledged the pandemic at this point. I didn't have some big survival plan in mind, and I still didn't expect the whole country, let alone the whole world, to collapse, but I figured I was getting older, my health wasn't great and I could always just revert to my suicidal state anyway, so I might as well spend my last chapter with my kids and my friends.

**But you didn't make it to California.**

Nope. Things suddenly sped up. Yonkers happened and everything started happening real fast and people were flooding west and east and in every direction. Some were trying to get to DC, convinced that they'd have the president and all the politicians and government people safe and sound in some bunker, and people wanted to be near the people who were going to be protected. People were scattering all over. Everyone was just trying to get to their family, or to their house or whatever. The roads were getting choked, and so I ended up at a trucking company's lot. They weren't guarding trailers with everything going on, so I helped myself to a smaller trailer for the better mileage. Put my collected gas and supplies in there, siphoned off the gas from a couple of their unattended rig's tanks, and tried to head west. Except the highways were pretty clogged.

**[Pauses. Refills his glass.]**

I mentioned I had decided to run a couple more jobs before heading over, right? Well, my big mistake was to take a delivery job that had me ended up in Richmond, Virginia. I really should have just gone to Cali as soon as I sold the house and could use the money for gas. But I guess everyone thought there'd be enough time. I guess everyone thinks there'll be just enough time for them to squeeze in. So there I was in Virginia, in a major population hub and the Battle of Yonkers happens. I was listening to the coverage of the Army setting up and everything on the radio as I drove, so I didn't see most of it except for when I was settled in a diner in the outskirts of Richmond. I had gassed up my truck and was getting a bit to eat. There was one of those alternative girls a couple of booths over. You know, hair dyed black, a nose piercing and tattoos of spiderwebs and spooky stuff. She was watching the Battle of Yonkers on her phone with her earbuds in. Normally I leave people alone, but the diner didn't have a TV in there, and I had never bothered with phone stuff and data streaming and all that. I was desperate to find out what was happening and the news outlets were all talking about how the military would crush Zack like it was nothing. They were all so confident that part of me was starting to think I'd made a mistake in selling my house and going deeper into debt. So, I tapped her on the shoulder and asked if I could listen in.

I had the server bring my food to her table and I ordered her a proper meal, since it turned out she was semi-homeless and couldn't afford more than coffee and a bagel. By the time Yonkers imploded and the feeds were cut, another trucker, the server and a retired couple were all crowded around this girl's phone.

"What happened?" The other trucker asked, because we were all just sitting there, watching the pundits talking about how the feed being cut just meant some technical difficulties and everything was going to be fine. **[Laughs.]** Damn, those clowns never missed a beat. We'd all just watched this guy's face be eaten by a lady and her kids in real time, and listened to members of the greatest military the world had ever seen panic and start to splinter. And these people were arguing on air about whether this was going to be the end of days. So the other trucker asks what had happened like he didn't see it.

"We're in big trouble," said the retired wife of the couple. "Let's go, we need to head to the cabin." And just like that, she takes her husband's arm and leads them off.

We all had this deepening pit in our stomachs. Like, we knew things were bad, but Jesus. The server gets on his phone and wanders off, I guess to call people and the other trucker heads off.

**What did you do?**

My meal had gone a little cool because I'd forgotten about it while we watched Yonkers, but I was suddenly desperate to eat as much as I could. I didn't know what crazy stuff was going to happen next, so I didn't want to miss out on what could be my last good meal. The girl took the hint and inhaled her food, too. Once we'd finished, she turned to me and asked where I was headed. I told her California, and she asked if she could come. We hit the toilets and got out of there.

Of course, the roads were getting more chaotic by the hour. And Zack was already sprinkled everywhere. And then the government announced they were pulling the army west and they weren't evacuating people with them. We were all supposed to take our chances trying to get north. **[Snorts into his glass.]** I guess I got north eventually. I even went south a couple of times. But I've distracted myself from what you were asking. **[Pours himself another glass and signals to the waitress for another handle.]**

**You were building up to how you got to the Consortium. How you ended up with The Guild.**

I came to their gates with a few other survivors relatively early on. The second year in. Finding it was idyllic. Yonkers had fallen. Military had pulled out. That goth girl I had taken with me from the diner? She was dead by then. My kids were somewhere on the West Coast and I couldn't contact them. Winter had come round again, and me an' some of the others I was with – we got all excited, because everything froze the first time, and we thought the army would come right back, you know? Just take care of everything, and we could clean up in the spring and be back to normal by the next year. Like something this big could end like a nightmare just like that. Just like waking up and taking a piss and crawling back into bed to start over and have a better dream.

So, that didn't happen, and we managed to survive the first winter and lie low after the thaw. And everything was frozen again, and we realized even if the army was comin' back, we needed to live long enough to see it. There was this yuppie couple, Chad and Sarah. Sarah'd gotten pregnant in all this mess and she was due, soon. Evie, this old lady we'd picked up on our way north, she'd been a nurse back in the day, but she had retired years ago. She was great, but Evie was kind of not-all-there, you know? We knew she wouldn't be able to handle it if there were any complications. We hadn't had more than a few packs of crackers in a couple of days, and we needed shelter, and Sarah was starting to slow down. Then we ran into this kid, maybe twelve? Called Marvin.

Marvin was a little shit, but he saved our lives. We were all picking through the same convenience store and ran into each other. He looked pretty well-fed so Sarah asked him in her least-threatening way whether he was okay and if he had a safe place to stay. Guess she was practicing her mother's voice or something. For a second he looked like he wanted to come with us, but then he said there were a bunch of people living in a fortress. It seemed weird, like something was up, 'cause the kid acted like he didn't really want to go back. But, he told us they had an open door policy and we weren't about to turn down a little charity. Comin' up on the school, with its iron gates, brick an' shit. And they'd just finished the interior walls earlier in the year, we were told. They were these giant solid walls, and they'd even built these big ass snowy, ice walls. We could see the tracks from their vehicles, an' if they had fuel to spare on pushing snow around, they sure had fuel enough to keep warm. [**Reaches down to scratch behind an enormous cat's ears. He leans back.]**

That place lost a lot of its veneer as time went on, but you have to understand – they saved us. So Marvin guided us through this gap in the snow wall and people standing guard on top it waved us through. A couple of them had guns, and they waved us on by. Didn't even check to see who we were. I was a military brat, and I can spot a career professional when I see one. The guy on that wall was a monster. At the time, I didn't know if it was that one guy or a Seal Team or a contingent, but whatever it was, they had military people with them. That was a big deal to us. He took us to the front fence where some people were shoveling snow. Took us through the first giant wall, and through a second. Through these iron and brick gates that were clearly there just to show off. These quaint-as-fuck brick buildings and castles. … It was beautiful, and the yuppies were crying, and Evie was about ready to collapse and this other guy we were with, Jamal, was looking around like he'd just died and gone to the good place.

And then this girl rides up on a friggin' horse. **[Laughs.]** What kind of place was this? That's what I wanted to know. She swung off her horse and asked if we were hungry. Didn't ask us our names, who we were, or if we were a threat. Asked if we were hungry, and when I asked what this place was, she laughed and said it was a college. She took us to this dormitory a little out of the way and they were serving up this soup. I still remember it. It was stew, with all these vegetables, potatoes and the people ladling it out would put meat in it if you wanted. Can you believe there were fucking vegetarians in this group? The world is starving and eating itself to shreds and there are people who just didn't feel like eating meat. Overall, I think that's bullshit, but at that moment, I thought we'd just stumbled into our dreams of returning to normal. If normal meant not harassing some hippies, I was good with that.

That's when we met Julia. She was one of the people who did intake. She sat down with us and had these forms for us to fill out, if you can believe it. We were in the apocalypse and we needed to fill out fucking forms. Medical history an' stuff. She said we were lucky, because we'd get the 'new and improved' check up, since they'd finally gotten their dogs trained and ready to sniff out the infected. Since it was winter, it wasn't technically necessary, but it was the protocol, so that was fine. As it was, their doctors would check us over normally.

**That must have been an adjustment.**

Like a dream. Once we'd slept and eaten and rested a couple of days, we were all eager to earn our keep. Even if it was something boring like shoveling snow. Evie was sent to "teach" some of the younger people. She wasn't all there, like I said, but I think they just used her as an extra person to make sure they did their homework or something. They had a few toddlers rolling around, so I guess she was with it enough to make sure they didn't do something stupid like fall down the stairs. Jamal had experience with carpentry and construction, so he spent his days with those people planning out how to better use their space. I got shoveling duty. Chad mucked the stables. Sarah got to kick back with a book and a thermos of tea. They pulled her in to do the dishes if they were strapped, but otherwise let her be.

**Sounds like a lot of work was getting done.**

Better believe it. They had all these greenhouses set up. Glass ones, plastic ones. They didn't try to grow much during the winter, but they needed them to expand the seasons, since the winters got so bad back then. It was an annual race to dry, pickle and can everything. We dried most things – didn't have too much extra salt and vinegar. That place was a tight ship. Once plans were made, everyone worked to get them done. Once they were achieved, new plans were made to address further to the future. Towards the end of the war, they were planning years in advance. They never filled all the dorm rooms, so we used a lot of them to store extra food and supplies. We were getting a handle on winter travel, so we checked warehouses and found more water purifiers. It was exhausting, but there was this feeling of winning. That doesn't mean we didn't have down time.

Julia – I mention her before? She was the one who showed me around a lot. She – we started to spend downtime together. To be fair, everyone spent a lot of our downtime with everyone. A lot of the work around the campus was fairly focused and lonesome. So, when we had downtime, most were ready to have quality time with a larger number of people. Maybe it's the pack mentality in humans, or maybe we were all in withdrawal from social media, and needed to see we still had a human race left. Either way, even the clicks that people formed usually gathered in some central area so everyone could enjoy the feeling of having numbers.

Julia was one of the original residents nearby the Consortium campus. She hadn't fully gotten over her brother and nieces being bitten, but she was still dreaming of all the possibilities the future might hold. She was a positive thinker that way. It was amazing. The rest of her family was back in the great lakes area, and she had no idea what their status was. But she still wanted to make her kids proud and become an artist or a writer. She wanted to lift people's spirits. **[Takes a swig.]** I don't know why she bothered spending any time with me. I was about fifteen years older than her, and kind of scary looking, I think. But maybe that was the new attractive thing. Instead of the young androgynous look with a cut jawline, the scruffy, older axe-murderer look was in. Maybe I seemed like a good investment. **[Reconsiders. Shakes head.]**

Nah, she was too good for that kind of scheming. Unless it was for practical jokes. She and this kid, Bhumi, were the worst. She had taken Bhumi under her wing, and together they took to bugging the founders, Marana and Courtney. I think Justin was the only one to think the things they did were funny, though.

**Marana and Courtney didn't think it was funny?**

Well, it's not like they could condone that sort of thing, really. Marana in particular had to keep a perpetual frown on her face. But, I think they were glad the campus had clowns running around. It broke through the direness every so often. Bhumi was younger, and didn't have the greatest sense of what was appropriate, so Julia reigned her in and kept her from doing stupid things that would have destroyed crops and stuff. But they'd do things like put horse manure in the ceilings, on top of those panels, so people couldn't figure out where the stench came from. Stuff like that. **[Eyes me from the corner of his eye.]**

How's Richard Whitaker?

**He's fine. He, uh, told me to tell you 'hello.'**** [Alvarez snorts.]**

Does he, now? He tell you why I hate him?

**He mentioned something about your girlfriend back at Consortium. ****[Pause.]**

Yeah? Quit squirming. He ever elaborate on that? **[Pause.]**

**He says he screwed you over and that he's sorry.**

I doubt he'd every be sorry. He's not the type. **[Shoots me a look.]** He never … you know, with Julia, so get your mind outta the gutter. **[Silence.]** Technically, he never did anything to either of us. But he's somehow the guy I hate most out of all the ass kissers.

**Worse than the college kids? The Founders?**

He was the whole damn problem, as far as I'm concerned. The founders had their heads so far up their ass they couldn't tell when they were being used and manipulated. **[Sees my question.]** There's the stuff the government wanted to do, things they wanted to protect, and they needed a 'safe' place. They knew a bunch of naive kids would be easy as pie. I didn't stay at the college during the full war, so I don't know all the details, but at it's most basic level, the deal made a lot of sense. The government has pledged to come back, and if you can just hold out, they'd like to use your place as a pit stop. It's a great opportunity, because of all the extra benefits associated with it. **[My glass is still half-filled, but he tops up my glass anyway.]** Anyway, I didn't have to think about it.

My first doubt came when Richard fuckin' Whitaker showed up and decided to chat it up with Julia. Started filling her head with dreams of opening a route to Illinois, where she might find her kids. Her husband had died as the Z Plague got started, but last she knew, the kids were fine, and to get her hopes up that she might find even one of her kids. God, I mean, if I thought for a moment that one of my kids was possibly alive and this side of the continent, I'd have done anything to get there. Julia was no different, but it was still early on in the war, and you never knew if you'd live long enough to see lunch.

So, Whitaker talks a good game. I admit it, he had me going, too. I had that niggling doubt at the back of my mind, but life was short, right? And suddenly, what does it matter if you die behind some tall walls if you don't know where your family is? The risks start looking pretty negligible compared to the potential gains. I joined The Guild because it might make Julia happy. And if we could make it all the way to Illinois, heck, that's another pathway open. It'd be another link in the chain to get to California. Maybe I'd be able to find a few people.

Anyway, he brokered the agreement that if the kids agreed to store research and samples – which, by the way, were originally intended to weaponize different viruses – then the government would grant extra aid. Turns out Whitaker facilitated that deal between the consortium and the government all while he was telling folks like Julia and me and others at the consortium that we were going to create a network of safe stops throughout the eastern US. I guess the government gave him a laundry list of stuff to do.

It didn't help that there had been a breach of the campus by ghouls towards the end of the summer. I think it was the second summer? The campus dealt with it fairly well, all things considered, but the hordes seemed to be bigger than even Yonkers, and the winter suddenly couldn't come soon enough. I don't remember the numbers, but we had gone from, like, eight hundred people or so on campus down to six-fifty or something. We lost over a hundred people that summer. We realized walls weren't enough, maybe nothing was going to be enough. So, with Whitaker spouting off about how much better we'd be with government help, in exchange for keeping a few shipping containers worth of stuff no questions asked, it's no wonder the kids caved.

I understood the rationale for the choice they made – hell, I understand it, today. But everything the government touched. Specifically, everything that Whitaker touched has either shriveled or died or gone to pot. For some reason, I thought The Guild would be better. I'd get away from the backroom deals, from the campus, and Julia and I'd work our way to Illinois and maybe California, too. We'd be forging these routes, creating a yellow brick road for survivors to find different holdouts. We'd be finding survivors and if any of them wanted to join us, we could grow. We could be proactive and start turning the tides. Middle America might have to wait a bit, since the sea of Zack wasn't something any power in the world could really handle at that point, but we'd lay the groundwork on the eastern half for when we finally pushed back. Turns out Whitaker had salted that field, too.

**What do you mean?**

I mean, it was Whitaker who decided the destinations and the routes. Even the kids had doubts about some of his "suggestions." They'd prepped pretty well and had all kinds of maps for the surrounding areas and notations on what resources were available. They wanted to shore up further north first, to build up experience with the longer winters as a safety net. He wanted to go south. To places like Virginia, Maryland and west, to places like Ohio and Wisconsin – he wanted to spread south and west simultaneously. It drastically upped a dangerous project into something straight up nuts. Use all these resources, take all these risks and sacrifice all these lives, for what?

It was to prioritize military and government lines, which cut off survivors by default. Think about it: Whitaker was the government liaison to the consortium, a non-government, independent holdout. Asking them to store shady shit in exchange for supplies? That's a fair deal, even if it stinks. Waiting for a breach, and using it as leverage to twist the kids' arms? That's bullshit political manuvering, if you ask me. But it's worse than that. After the breach, the kids agreed to this shiny new Guild, thinking 'At least we'll be connecting to other holdouts. Maybe we'll be able to help each other out.' All that kum ba ya stuff.

But Whitaker, and the government, was just using the consortium's resources to run stupid errands. He routed everyone so that military and government lines were prioritized, which inherently meant that survivors and other holdouts ranked lower. Any government's job is to project it's citizens, and there they were, ensuring the stability of random bases and offices and whatever on the taxpayer's dime. People lost their lives working on the Guild's project, thinking they were helping their fellow survivors, and really they were just using precious fuel, food, energy and lives on a side project.

… I had started working on this thing for Julia. I – **[Checks himself before continuing.]** Well, I was working on this project. Julia was all about art and the written word and lifting people's spirits and stuff. And I was about as artistic as a five-year-old with stick figures. **[Suddenly becomes animated.]** But I've always been okay with my hands, and I'd started making this book. You see, books on useful subjects, like electrical wiring, or canning or farming were at a new premium. And story books were pretty valued, too, since surfing the net wasn't how anyone could kill time, anymore. But I'd sometimes go on scavenging runs, and I'd been collecting some stuff from arts and craft stores and those hipster places in Northampton. You know, where you could get glitter and origami paper … ?

People left those places alone, since you can't fight ghouls with origami throwing stars, and you can't eat paper. But there were these specialty papers, made from hemp and elephant poop – no, I'm not kidding, people really bought the stuff – and so I'd been collecting things I thought she'd like. And I'd borrowed this book from the campus library on book binding. I'd borrowed the needles and bartered for some of the proper thread. I was making her a book where she could write or draw whatever she wanted. **[Long pause.]** Not that it matters, now.

Footnotes:

[1] The Guild: A network of individuals, groups, and stops that provided passage around eastern North America. It was partially supported by the Canadian, US and Mexican governments who occasionally left supplies along the routes.

[2] Please note: The name "Richard Whitaker" is an alias, as requested by the United States Department of State.

[3] Amateur Radio Operators: An amateur radio operator is someone who uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other amateur operators on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Their contributions during the war were invaluable and their services remain integral to life today.

[4] Firehouse Fire Fighters: During the war, one of the lesser-known holdouts was known as the Firehouse. They were a collective of first responders, their friends and family that gathered into their district firehouses once the city of Boston was overrun. While the Firehouse was intermittently left vacant during the war, their commitment to always return has since inspired an academy award-nominated film detailing their struggles.


	2. Chapter 2 - Oliver

**Scripps College, California**

**[Jeremiah Oliver is the image of the quintessential academic. Framed pictures hang on his office wall, several of them damaged and scavenged from his past life. Earlier ones show a younger, jovial literature professor, while a couple war era pictures show a much aged man, grouped with a unit of similarly severe-faced people. Today, 74, Jeremiah embodies both academic and worldly wisdom. He invites me to sit as one of his former students briefly pops her head in to ask if we need anything.]**

**Was that …?**

Yes [1]. You may have heard she was sectioned [2]. True. But she's functional, and has regular appointments to make sure she stays that way, has a quality life. I'm not in psychology, and I'm just a former professor of hers, so it's not my business. Speaking of my business, I'm still not quite sure which part of my experience you're interested in. There's this narrative in our country's history that a small few but great men built the country as we know it. It was more the cumulative efforts of the many. Similarly, most people spent the plague wearing a series of different hats.

**I want your story.**

Are you sure? I've never been the best lecturer. Ratemyprofessor [3], when there was such a site, used to have every detail on how boring I was. Although, **[grins]** I did have a couple chili peppers [4].

**I'm sure. You can start wherever.**

Well, if you're sure. I was 57 when the Panic started up, nearing 60, so I won't go into my entire life story. Suffice it to say I was like anyone else. I had a wife and kids. I'd gotten tenured here just a few years earlier and was content to teach while publishing stuffy volumes that only a couple hundred people in the world would ever read, let alone buy. We lived a privileged, comfortable and boring life, and though I didn't realize it at the time, I loved every moment.

I'll save you any suspense or speculation. My family is all gone now, **[clears throat]** but we lasted together for a while, in no small part due to the Five Colleges. It was fairly well documented, and I just helped with fortifications and organizing supplies, so I won't bother trying to tell you how it all came together. She'd **[nods towards the door]** be much better at that, since she was one of the students who spearheaded the enterprise. Once the government cleared the West Coast, my family stayed put. We were already from the area, it was cleared, we were together, and I planned on everything staying that way. I knew how lucky we were to be an intact nuclear family. I knew my older brother was likely dead in Florida and my wife hadn't heard from family in Europe, but we had each other and our kids, which was becoming exceptionally rare by the time the school became fortified.

Our kids had other plans. They were teens nearing adulthood and were set on signing up to help sweep the rest of the coast. The government had lowered the age requirement. Before, it used to be that you could join as early as 16 or 17, but only with signed permission from a parental guardian. Otherwise, you had to be 18. Once the war kicked in, you could join at 15, no questions asked. My wife and I were pissed.

I get it. They needed warm bodies to get things accomplished, and it's not like schools were open, anyway. Further, a lot of kids had no legal guardian left. Most kids, accompanied or not, didn't have a valid, state-issued picture ID, and the government couldn't afford to have unsupervised youth running around when they could be doing something productive for the war effort. And, since confirming identification was near-impossible, particularly for lone minors, enforcing an age requirement was unrealistic. As soon as someone looked at all like they might be as old as 15, they were accepted. In fact, they accepted kids who were obviously way younger than that and just put them in jobs considered to be safer, like custodial work, where it would be harder for ten through fifteen-year-olds to screw things up for the war effort. Twelve had become the new twenty.

But my daughter was eighteen and old enough by every standard, and my son was sixteen and even more set on enlisting. My wife and I couldn't stop them, so we went with them. My wife was a doctor, so she was able to get a posting just about anywhere. I was a man past my prime who thumbed obscure books for a living, so I enlisted as well.

One advantage I had over many other recruits was that I was relatively fit and healthy. A lot of the people trying to enlist older than thirty were out of shape, diabetic, asthmatic, what-have-you. I had no health problem other than being 58 by then. I'd even run a half-marathon a couple years earlier. I was in better cardiovascular shape than my kids. We went through basic training together and deployed together. We were lucky, because we were together for however long we could make it last. With any luck, I'd be able to get ahead of them and put myself between them and Zack.

**What sort of work did you do?**

Earlier on? A lot of guard duty, doing final neighborhood sweeps, that sort of thing. We usually brought up the rear, so apart from the odd left-over, we didn't see much action at first. After the big attacks, including the Battle of the Five Colleges, we were okay with doing scut work to just clear out some of suburbia. Then we were called to LA. As we were rolling out of this white picket fenced neighborhood, we saw our replacements passing us by. Some of the kids looked as young as eleven. They had literal preteens replacing us in doing final sweeps of neighborhoods. It meant that, if too many of us died clearing the last half of LA, those kids would be right behind us to plug the holes and try to finish what we couldn't. They were shitty stakes to have.

LA was a hellish numbers game. We'd already drawn as many from the city as we could before even going in, but a lot of them didn't have the smarts to get around or out of buildings, so we had to go in after them. It was a simple strategy of clearing streets and buildings, and it helped that the West Coast is notable for its car-friendliness and grid city layouts. The shear population was a hard wake up call. The Battle of the Five Colleges was bad, but we had strong fortifications and didn't need to go anywhere. This time, we were on an interception course for throngs of ghouls. Turns out there was a reason why we'd had a relatively breezy time going through the neighborhoods. They had, millions of them, made their way into the cities. Following survivors up buildings, clogging alleys, streets, choking intersections and feeding on stragglers making their way to rooftops.

The military was choppering leftover survivors from rooftops above us as we hit the streets. The noise set them off. That's how we lost my daughter. **[Pauses. Takes a moment to pour a glass of bourbon.]** Want one?

**No, thank you.**

The noise was bouncing off the buildings, crap was flying around in the turbulence, the streets were solid with ghouls, all trying to go up into buildings to follow survivors, trying to get out onto the streets to get to the choppers, trying to push towards another front, trying to push towards us at our front. It was actually somewhat beneficial for us, because we depended on Zack all wanting to go in different directions to keep them from overrunning us. It let us pick them off in a somewhat organized fashion. This was before our final battle protocols had been put in place. Everything was still a mess.

The Air Force did dead drops, which helped. We'd pick a place away from all the fronts in, for example, an intersection full of Z. They'd drop incendiaries that fried them and made a lot of noise and bright lights. Combined with our weapons fire, it kept them circulating. But we were in close quarters in the city. Even though western streets are wider and flatter than elsewhere in the world, we were still too close to be comfortable. We had set barriers that we slid along the streets as we went, mostly to slow them down in case we needed to run. We were next to a few buildings we hadn't cleared, yet. Another dead drop was due in a few minutes which we needed. The herd was starting to turn to us, and our flimsy portable barricade wouldn't hold against that many. I held point position, because there was no way in hell I was going to let my kids go ahead of me.

The herd was getting close and we were all tapping away, dropping Zs. There was this cracking sound, and I got pieces of glass bouncing off my rifle. I didn't bother looking up because I knew the rest of my team would be on it, whatever it was. I needed to focus on my job, which was to make sure Zack didn't make it to our barricade. Then I heard a crunching sound and screaming. Zack was so close. I couldn't afford to look away, even though I recognized my daughter's voice and my son had started yelling.

The dead drop came, and the herd got distracted. That's when I was finally able to look over. The building next to our barricade had several Zs a few floors up. They'd broken the window and fallen right on the barricade where Sarah was stationed. We didn't have bite proof uniforms back then. It was still kind of a ragtag mix of whatever they could scrounge for us. She had a hard shell helmet, which a Z had cracked his head on when he fell on her. But the one who stacked on top stayed intact and started gnawing on her shoulder. Alex, my son, had killed it and taken care of some of the others that had come from the window above. He was pulling her out from under this pile, but it was ... Her uniform and her skin were compromised. **[Drains glass. A few moments pass. He refills it.]**

I think I was 59 when we went to the front of the Rocky Pass Campaign. They'd held the line there, processing whatever civilians made it there and sending them to the refugee camps. Yeah, yeah, they told everyone not to follow the military West. We couldn't afford to feed and process that many people. Couldn't afford the horde that would surely follow. That was all a world away as far as I was concerned. The US, at the Honolulu Conference, had made it clear to the world that we would make a decisive push back. But, to make it to the East Coast, we had to make it past our own threshold.

It was more of the same, except in the wilderness rather than an urban setting, and all in a straight line. We went to plug a hole up in northern Washington, prepared to head into Idaho and clear it. As if you could walk in a line and clear terrain as rough as that. And you had to be careful, because Zs and people alike were still showing up, having made it past the Rocky Checkpoints. Granted, a lot of the terrain was pretty flat, but we still had to be cautious.

**They made it through the checkpoints?**

Sure. The border guys were really good at what they did, but there weren't enough people to cover every foot of the line the government had drawn. If you watched enough, you could easily slip by the patrols. Even if you didn't, you could just walk through Montana , accidentally miss a patrol and never even know you'd crossed the zone. But the main highways, roads, even gravel paths and anywhere easily accessible to people were pretty well covered. That said, you still got ferals, quislings, refugees and Zs slipping by. That's why it took three years to clear the mountain ranges alone, before we ever started the Road to New York. That's also why neighborhood watches in the cities were so critical, because even after you cleared an area, the porous border would let more in. Even with the Appalachians, it took us three years to get from the Rockies to the Eastern Seaboard. That distance is about two thirds of the continent's entire width. The western mountain ranges and coast make about the last third of that distance. Yet, it took three years to clear the mountains, even with sparser populations, than it did to clear the rest of the godforsaken United States.

The first year towards the Rocky Pass was rough, especially adjusting from a somewhat temperate climate in northern California to those winters. Luckily, we had the now well-known Sergeant Avalon with us. I was in her unit and it was a fairly big unit. She kept us in line and made sure we were always within eyesight and earshot of each other. We needed that discipline, too, since we had had a high turnover rate in LA, and were stuck with a bunch of newbies who didn't know the first thing about our operations. They were worse than children; they were adults with poor trigger discipline and prewar habits. They ranged in age and background, but it didn't matter. A lot of them didn't have any experience fighting Zack or being outside of an urban or suburban area, meaning most didn't have a lot to bring to the table until they had experience. Even my son had limited patience with them, and he had always been the patient type. **[A couple moments pass. Jeremiah swills his glass.]**

**Your first year clearing the mountain passes would have been around the time when you ran into two missing Air Force officers. Can you tell me more about that?**

About running into them? Not much to tell. Four or five of us were huddled together, eating our breakfast before we set off. We heard crunching snow, and knew it was human, because it was too cold for Zack. That left quislings, ferals or refugees. I was hoping it would be a quisling, since they don't run or do anything quickly. Instead, a couple of ragged kids in fatigues pop out of the bushes and identify themselves. We called the sergeant and she sent them for processing. Easiest thing we did that day. Had no idea they would join our unit a couple of weeks later.

**Did the front often take people that quickly?**

If they were current or recent military and wanted to join us, yeah. This was before we had enough people to do anything. The joke was asked how many people did it take to screw in a lightbulb. There were a couple of answers. One answer was that it didn't matter, because there were no lightbulbs anymore, or no need for them. The other was one, but that it wouldn't happen, because there wasn't anyone left around to do it. We took just about anyone, but a lot of people, including former military, needed to be retrained or trained for the first time. In the meantime, we needed to keep pushing towards the Pass. Anyway, after a couple weeks to get checkups, eat and gain some weight, the two of them were back. **[Nods towards the door again.]** Pissed the sergeant off, that's for sure.

**Why?**

Because they turned out to be somewhat of a couple of loose cannons. They weren't a huge danger to us, mind you. They weren't the new enlisted who didn't know what they were doing, but neither were they good at walking the line all day. They had a habit of powering ahead and disappearing for hours. We all knew they'd spent the past year hoofing it from Virginia or wherever, so they could handle themselves better than just about all of us and we never needed to bother sending anyone looking for them. But it meant we had to plug the hole they left. The Sarge had words with them. It didn't do much good, because Section 8 wasn't a thing yet, and they weren't the kind of people you could just intimidate.

Turned out to be really useful to have them out there, because they were essentially backtracking over where they'd already come from. They'd eat breakfast with the rest of us, then they'd split and head off by themselves. I don't think they really planned it, but it ended up that they would scout ahead, one heading more northeast and the other southeast. They'd pick their way ahead and come back, bringing whatever news they'd found. I'm not sure exactly how they survived the trek west, but they got scary good at tracking Zs and people alike. I'd be walking the line and come across a Z one of them had unearthed from a landslide and taken care of. The only thing they didn't take care of themselves were ferals and hostile LaMOEs. Every so often, one of them would come trotting back to the line and give us the heads up that one, or however many, were headed in our direction and we'd be more prepared. It's why I joined, later on.

**Is that how the Coyote Unit got its start?**

Coyote Unit. That was the official name the brass came up with, but everyone just called it the Gopher Unit. The unit's mission was to scout ahead of the official lines, with a particular interest in the location and numbers of zombies, ferals, rebels, and survivors, and to assess threats and dangers from the environment and potential hostiles. They named it after the coyote to give the idea of this tireless traveling trickster, able to slip back and forth across enemy territory. Everyone knew we were gophers running errands because the government didn't give enough of the overhead for drones or aircraft to do that kind of intelligence gathering.

**Why not?**

Resources, for one thing. Planes are gas guzzlers and needed to be used for less frequent, more vital purposes. Daily drones were still costly. We definitely used drones, but only farther south where they had the conditions, and even that was on and off. Drones require trained personnel to control and maintain them, even if they are a cheaper and less dangerous alternative to planes. Drones require personnel to go over the data to extract anything useful. Those people and resources could be doing other things. They had a limited range and limited visibility and were really delicate, especially with the weird weather. Even before the war, you couldn't really use them if it was too dark, cloudy, foggy, rainy or windy. And Zack didn't have the heat signatures to make them useful at night or in low visibility. The ice storms and long winters didn't exactly lend much opportunity for most of the year. Besides, the International Space Station kept tabs on larger herds for us to plan for. Drones are also visible and audible to people who look for them. Most of the hostile groups had military background and knew the kinds of tech we were capable of. If you're trying to discreetly gather information on potentially hostile strongholds, a lone traveler or pair is a lot less strange than equipment hovering above. Gophers on the ground also had the ability to make contact with people and get a feel for any brewing trouble.

Gophers were an effective way to gather information that would directly benefit our lines without much cost. They required exactly the same things as linemen: food, boots and gear. If they were infected it wasn't like they added much to Z's numbers. If they died, then besides a radio, some gear and ammunition, we didn't lose much. Linemen sometimes found Gophers who'd died with their gear and ammunition intact. Sometimes infected Gophers would make it easy by coming back as Zack, bringing all their gear with them. In those cases, the government got a return on everything except the warm body. Even when they implemented Section 8, they didn't necessarily need to take them from the field. With the exception of some dangerous cases, like a few who went berserk, the government didn't need to provide much in the way of services.

The dirty secret was that not all the Gophers were enlisted or commissioned. We picked a few up along the way, since they often knew the area and had survived in it. That meant if they cracked, they didn't have much of a paper trail. Therefore, they didn't need to expend services like mental health on them. So, after a vetting process to make sure they weren't some rebellious nut, they joined the unit as free agents who traded food and a place to crash for a heads up on anything they saw or heard.

Sarge was glad to get our two out of her unit, since it meant it was no longer her job to keep them in line. Instead, we would just watch the horizon in case they booked it back with hostile rebels on their heels.

**Why did you join? Did you have survival skills or know the area?**

No. I wasn't a soft-palmed professor anymore, but I wasn't some gung ho survivalist, either. Things like typhus, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, the common cold, flu. A lot of things we'd gotten rid of or under control in the US were back. My wife was working on the lines behind us, trying to stave off the crazy bugs cropping up. My son had been at my side since we'd holed up at the Five Colleges and I was desperate to get ahead of him. I still had hope he'd make it through this mess, but I had decided that even if he didn't, I wouldn't live long enough to see that happen. Alex was older, wiser by this point. If I told him to do something, he obeyed and hid his feelings if he didn't like it. He knew it would kill his mother and me if he died doing something stupid. So, I told him I was going to join the Gopher unit and that he would not, and he obeyed.

We settled into a new rhythm. Strickland, the guy who stumbled out of the bushes the year before and helped to start the ball rolling for this unit, taught me how to go into the field. I called Strickland and Barrett kids earlier. They weren't, really. I think they were in their mid-twenties when we first ran into them, and I know in those days Alex being 21 was the equivalent to him being a forty-something. But I was almost 61 by then and that made me about a thousand, and Strickland was no older than 28, which made him a kid. **[Takes a sip.]**

He reminded me of my older brother when we were kids. And he reminded me that Alex was only a few years younger than him. And he reminded me that, if Alex was going to carve out a life for himself, he would need to turn into a Zombie Terminator like Strickland. **[Pours himself a third bourbon, leaving the decanter nearing empty.]**

So, Strickland took me on errands to show me the ropes. We called our scouting missions errands. Errands could really vary, but for the most part, we were back at camp by dark for a good night's sleep. After eating in the morning, we'd head out and just walk. Depending on the terrain and how quiet we could be, we'd either take a few steps and listen, or just power on because it was flat with high visibility. During the winter, depending on how much snow there was, we would wear snowshoes or take skis, knowing you were skiing right over time bombs ready to break their fast when they thawed out.

**You didn't try to find them? Take care of them?**

Nope. As a gopher, your goal was to inform the lines of useful information. You'd never find all the Zack in wintertime, and watching our backs come the thaw was inevitable. Telling the line that you'd seen Zack ahead was superfluous. Remember, the ISS kept everyone apprised of hordes of Zack. Gophers came across them, gophers went past them. Your mission was to cover ground ahead of the line. The purpose was to get a feel for anything that helped the lines stay prepared.

**If not Zack, then what sorts of information did you collect?**

If you found evidence of ferals, you'd sit tight and keep your eyes peeled for them. More often than not, they'd already seen you and if you kept going you'd find yourself in a world of trouble with no back up. Turned into a waiting game. If and when you saw them and you had enough distance, you'd book it back to the lines. If not, or if you were too close, you just had to figure that one out.

Finding groups of survivors was a major part of the job. Ideally, you were supposed to watch them from afar if you could. Figure out how human they still were. Then, you'd make contact and try to figure out if they would pose much of a threat to the boys back at base. Once they were available, we wore bite proof suits under our clothes, but we didn't wear the rest of the uniforms. That way, if they turned out to be a contingent of organized rebels, you could casually pass yourself off as a floating passerby, take your leave and hightail it back. Every so often, you'd come across someone or a group that wasn't feral, weren't rebels and weren't the average LaMOE. They were, well, pretty far gone. You had to watch out for them, but the trouble was, you could never really tell until it was too late.

Crossing the plains, we lost Ramos to some people who'd gone mad. I was behind the lines that day and heard him radio in. He'd been watching a group of seven or eight for a couple of days, and was going to make contact. We found his remains a week later, shackled to a lamppost. His L-Pill was still in the slot of his suit's collar and the rest of his gear was gone. When Marsden's team ran into a group with Ramos's brown backpack, it gave them the heads up they needed. Marsden and Cross barely escaped, but Edwards wasn't so lucky. Sergeant Becker, a former army accountant, had a run in with another group of crazies. I never did hear what they'd done to him - I just saw him being carried on a stretcher as they sent a couple tanks in to take care of whatever he'd encountered. We were a pretty good litmus test that way. Canaries in the coal mine. **[Sips glass.]** Anyway, we heard later on that he'd been declared unfit and sectioned out.

**So you had to be constantly aware of everything. That's got to be exhausting. Sounds like you all had some pretty close calls. **

**[Quiet moment while Oliver absently cleans the lenses of his glasses.]**

You'd keep your focus up by switching between watching your surrounding area to checking your feet to make sure you didn't step on a surprise. We didn't need to be invisible or anything, but the goal was to be discreet, so our sidearms had silencers and we stuck to crowbars and other hand weapons. We rarely carried rifles unless we thought we might need one. Just us, relatively lightly armed, with as light a pack as possible in case we didn't make it back by dark. Unless you found and secured adequate shelter, you'd always try to make it back by dark in winter, or risk the very real possibility of freezing to death. Kids these days don't get the reference, but it was like the Korean War [5], where people were losing fingers, toes, noses, etc., to frostbite as par for the course. That's if they didn't die outright. We lost a lot of gophers that way. We'd find them frozen, still reaching forward as they crawled back to camp. Either that, or thawing in some snow shelter they'd dug for themselves before they died of exposure, anyway.

I had a close call on one of the earlier errands I ran alone. I had hugged Alex and walked on. Couple hours later, I heard the moans. Six of them had treed a cougar. I don't know what I was thinking, because I had told myself I didn't take chances, but cougars were so rare, I didn't want to be the reason that one died, you know? I was a pretty good shot by then, they were fully occupied and I had the element of surprise. I took them out. Animals don't get enough credit - it knew I was alive and not looking to challenge it. The second the last Zack was down, it jumped down and took its leave. I started poking the bodies over. I was checking for freshness so I could get a handle on whether it would be more prudent to call it a day and head back. That's when a gnarled foot stepped into view from beyond the tree. There wasn't time for me to get off my hands and knees and bring my gun up for a head shot. Instead, I capped one of his knees and tried scrambling to the side.

I knew I was in trouble when blood flew into my face. I knew I was dead when I felt what I now knew to be a quisling fall on top of me. He started chewing on the back of my boot, which was lucky, but now I was on all fours with Zack square on my back with his bleeding leg painting the rest of me red. I was pretty well fed for those days, which still meant I didn't carry much in the way of fat. But with my pack on and a six foot guy, as emaciated as he was, draped over me, I couldn't get up through brute strength. I couldn't knock him off. I started panicking, because my previous experience with close calls had always involved Alex and other teammates by my side. I'd never been alone, on my own, like this before. All I could do was hope that he bled out or passed out before he tried chewing through my pants, which weren't yet bite proof.

The next thing I felt was the guy jolt and go limp before being dragged off of me. It was Barrett, on her way back from an extended errand. She'd anchored her little rock hammer into Zack's head and used it to haul him off. I had a healthy respect for her and Strickland. You don't sail the seas of Zack and make it to harbor without your fair share of baggage. But I hadn't spent personal time with either of them. The time I spent with Strickland taught me he was just your modest action movie protagonist, and Barrett seemed like the kid sister type.

I don't know if you've met many gophers, but don't let any of us fool you. There's a switch. One minute, we're whoever we were before, your boring professor, your patriotic action hero, your kid sister. And really, everyone has multiple facets to their personalities, so any individual encompasses a multitude of qualities. But the sea of Zack takes it out of you. So you flip the switch. The next minute, all the world's a stage and you have a part to play, so you do your job and play your part.

That day, when I had my close call, was when I finally started to figure out how two kids made it to harbor. She was all stoic business, checking the quisling for anything useful, ensuring he was dead. Then, she gave his head a pat. Or a touch of some kind. Like they'd been friends at some point. Helped me adjust my pack and we set off back to camp. I thought it would be one of those quiet walks back. Then, prodding the ground ahead with a stick to warn of any buried Zack, she turns to me and starts chatting like it was any old stroll.

This kid, who was 26 or 27 but looked like a shortstop fifteen-year-old, turns to me and asks what kind of literature I used to teach. I taught American literature but, out of standard practice, I had a fair bit of knowledge of most classic western literature. She turned out to be a fan. Had done plays and could still recite entire acts from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hamlet. Had bits of some of the other major works memorized. She'd been on a long errand for a few days, and was wired. You know when kids are so exhausted they're hyper? She needed to blow off steam, so she recited a jolly rendition from Midsummer until we reached camp, just as it grew dark. She'd compartmentalized everything until she decided it was safe enough to open one of her boxes of choice.

**Did compartmentalization help you handle things?**

God no. It didn't help a goddamn bit. We heard we'd lost my wife a few weeks later from the flu. I guess compartmentalization helped me focus on my job, but it didn't help me. Alex died several weeks after that, before we'd even officially begun the Road to New York. Antibiotic-resistant staph infection. MRSA. **[Starts to take a sip. Decides against it. Then, reconsiders again and drains his third glass.]**

Two fucking kids wandered their way through Zack with a couple of snack bars, pistols and a frigging dream. My daughter was feet away from me when a couple of Zack landed right on top of her. My wife, a doctor, died of the flu. My son… I promised myself I wouldn't see him go before me. I'd get ahead of him… He caught an infection and died. I was on an errand, so I never saw him go – just got back in time to be asked if there was anyone at home to send his body to. While I was at it, would I like to update my wishes for my corpse when I finally kicked it?

Oh, I saw the army doctor lurking nearby, waiting. Watching to see if I would crack. It was a blur of moments when I was hyper aware of everyone watching me to see which switch I flipped. Would I weep over Alex's body, keep watch through the night like some solemn character from the books on which I lectured? Would I explode into a fury, take revenge on Zack? Maybe I'd howl at the sky for everything the cosmos had taken. **[Sullen silence. Stares at the bottom of his glass.]**

**What did you do?**

The first one. Not with the overt weeping, I was just back from a long errand and didn't have the energy. But I sat with him. I had wept over my daughter. When my wife went, I kept a stiff upper lip for my son. I didn't know how to grieve for the last thing lost. The only thing I could do now was strike the pose of the bereaved from the many books I'd read over the years. Story books painted pictures of sitting with loved ones, keeping vigil, so I reverted to the only thing I knew from my previous life. **[Gestures to the shelves that line his office, crammed with volumes. As I take my leave, he empties the decanter into his glass.]**

Footnotes:

[1] "Sergeant Avalon," one of the famed war heroes from The Battle of the Five Colleges. See the original Commission Report for further details.

[2] Section 8 is a category of discharge from the United States military, used for a service member judged mentally unfit for service.

[3] Rate My Professor . com, now defunct, was a pre-war review site, founded in May 1999 by John Swapceinski, a software engineer from Menlo Park, California, which allows college and university students to assign ratings to professors and campuses of American, Canadian, and United Kingdom institutions.

[4] The Chili Pepper rating: A rating of attractiveness of faculty on . After criticism, RateMyProfessor dropped the chili pepper as a method of rating teachers for being creepy and irrelevant to teaching.

[5] Korean War: A war between North Korea and South Korea, beginning 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea following a series of clashes along the border. In the United States, the Korean War became colloquially known as 'The Forgotten War,' and is often remembered by bitter cold that brought extreme cases of frost bite to troops.


End file.
